For those of you supporting a child with worries and anxiety, you are most likely already well aware that there are certain things one might do or say to help your child manage their worries and other things one could do or say that might push them further into Fight, Flight or Freeze mode. The article posted below shares some really great options of what could be said to your child when those worries start to creep inside their head.

Please note that some of the options are better used when you have some time (i.e. after dinner), and others could be used when the bus will be arriving in 5 minutes.

“Can you draw it?” is a great choice when a worry has been reoccurring and you have some time to discuss it at a calm time with your child.

“Let’s change the ending,” or “Which calming strategy do you want to use,” might be a great option when time is of the essence and you have already had conversations during quieter times and have come up with a plan.

Take a look and see which ones you think could be useful for your family and give them a try.

Thank you so much to those who were able to attend the parent workshop last night. If you weren’t able to make it, the slides are posted below. They provide information about a few programs; the Zones of Regulation and Social Thinking. It also shares many strategies that could support various situations that may occur outside of school. Let us know if you have any questions!

Managing intrusive or unwelcome thoughts is part of the human experience, but for some of us, those thoughts may be dominating the conversation in our head. As adults, we tend to understand that thoughts are not permanent and not even always accurate. Children have a more difficult time understanding that concept. If it is running through their brain, then it must be true.

If you have a child expressing negative thoughts, you can introduce the concept of Sunny Thoughts and Cloudy Thoughts. When you link something like weather, it makes the conversation much more approachable for your child and for you. Just like a storm can blow into town, so can a negative thought. Those storms also blow out of town. How can we help those cloudy thoughts move out of your brain? Can we think of a sunny thought to replace that cloudy one?

For older children, I often introduce the idea of an Inner Critic, instead of linking with the weather. Older children can understand that there are movie critics, food critics, etc… And critics can share positive or negative opinions. When discussing an inner critic, you can remind your child that it is important to give a balanced review. Your brain is not being fair if it only shares one opinion. What is the alternate review?

With the arrival of 2017, always comes a wave of resolutions, ideas and other plans for what to begin. Though I am not always one to jump on this bandwagon, I saw this post and thought it would be a nice tradition for a family to begin. So if you are looking for a new way to integrate more positive thinking and a way to take note of the smaller things in life, this might be worth a try! Happy New Year!!